a much agreed-upon rereading by Balzac

THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT

Balzac is benefiting from surprising news this fall: Lost illusions suitable for theater and cinema, Eugenie Grandet brought to the screen by Marc Dugain … It’s because we are never done with Balzac, and his Human comedy still remains the sharpest scalpel for dissecting our times – at regular intervals, directors remember. At least that’s how this new adaptation ofEugenie Grandet : the trajectory of this idealistic little provincial mown down by the patriarchate still concerns us, necessarily.

While sticking to a meticulous reconstruction of the period, Dugain takes the opportunity to slightly change the tone of the novel, the story of a dream of love that bumps into the stinginess of reality. Dugain makes the work more romantic than it is, even if it means bordering on a form of sentimentality foreign to Balzac, and translates it in the terms of a contemporary feminism which offers its heroine a much happier and emancipatory outcome.

Formal Preciousness

In this new adaptation, it is less the agreed, slightly opportunistic rereading that poses a problem than the extreme formal preciousness of Marc Dugain: it is difficult to find what makes cinema here as everything is purely illustrative.

Candle lighting, costumes, direction of actors, chiaroscuro of the image: the filmmaker takes such care in the reconstruction that he forgets to stage – that is to say to film ideas . This preciousness in the execution prevents the film from being crossed by a breath, a glow, a face or the tremor of an emotion. So many affectations which, far from exalting the fiery power of the novel, suffocate its flame under layers of academicism.

Eugenie Grandet. French film by Marc Dugain, with Joséphine Japy, Olivier Gourmet, Valérie Bonneton (1 h 45).

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